Introductory Letter.

To the Right Hon. Earl Durham &c., &c., &c.,

I have taken the liberty to address the following Letters to your Lordship, without having previously solicited your Lordship's permission, under the assurance that, in consenting to become the Governor of the New Zealand Land Company, it was by no means your Lordship's intention merely to lend the countenance of your name to a small coterie of Metropolitan Speculators, associated for the sole purpose of making money by the transference or sale of shares in a joint-stock speculation. From the high rank which your Lordship holds in the aristocracy of England; from the higher character as an enlightened statesman and distinguished patriot which your Lordship unquestionably bears among the middle classes of this great nation; but especially from the profound, comprehensive, and truly British views of national policy, exhibited in your Lordship's admirable Report on the state of Canada, I felt assured that the only motive that could possibly have induced your Lordship to patronise an Association for the Colonization of New Zealand was a sincere desire to promote page vii the welfare and the moral advancement of your fellow-men, and at the same time to extend the power and to increase the resources of the British empire. In such circumstances I make no apology for addressing your Lordship, as I am sure your Lordship will not regard either as uninteresting or unimportant the suggestions even of a humble individual, as to the method of procedure in which the attainment of these noble objects may be most effectually secured.

To extend to the farthest regions of the habitable globe, and to perpetuate to the close of time, the noble language, the equitable laws, and the Protestant religion of this favoured land, is indeed an enterprise well worthy of the first of England's nobility; and I am confident, my Lord, there is no case in which the British patriot, the genuine philanthropist, the Christian man, has reason to feel more deeply interested in the progress of such an enterprise than the one with which your Lordship is at present associated—the Colonization of New Zealand.